Syracuse University senior gets sad news of cousins in Haiti

Like thousands of Americans with Haitian relatives, Cathiana Vital, an accounting senior at Syracuse University, worried as she waited for word about family members on the island nation from which both of her parents emigrated.

“I have a lot of cousins,” she said this week. Some have been heard from and are well. An uncle who lived at the home her parents still own in Port-au-Prince fled the house just before it collapsed. In Haiti, the boyfriend of a cousin had a working phone. Vital and others depended on him for news of their families.

For two members of Vital’s family, the news was not good. Two cousins who live in the U.S. had returned to Haiti to visit family. She learned they did not survive the quake that flattened much of the country. One of the cousins was a 10-year-old boy.

Vital, who lives with her family in Newark, N.J., said her father is in shock from the disaster. “I don’t think it really hit him yet,” she said.

The earthquake killed people when buildings collapsed around them; it also killed those who ran outside and were hit by rocks that rolled down from the hills around Port-au-Prince, she said.

Vital has never been to Haiti. Whenever she was going to travel there, she said, her family would tell her to wait. “Let’s just wait for it to get better,” she was told.

With the country’s infrastructure smashed, Vital is thinking not of visiting, but helping Haiti.

She wants to organize a campuswide fundraiser for Haitian earthquake relief at Syracuse University. She said she knows many groups will want to help, but believes a single pledge-athon that can reach out to the entire university community can do the most good.

She said there are some Haitians on campus, but more students who are half-Haitian. Many, she said, have roots in Haiti and other Caribbean countries.